George Galloway's dramatic victory for Respect party was down to his skilled oratory and Labour's failure to take the seat seriously, says a new detailed report of the 2012 result
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Ed Jacobs
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 January 2013 11.01 GMT
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George Galloway celebrates his byelection win over Labour in Bradford West. Photograph: Ross Parry Agency
It is now almost a year since George Galloway dealt the Labour party a devastating blow in Bradford West, masterminding one of the most sensational byelection shocks in recent memory.
The Respect party candidate's victory prompted a period of Labour soul-searching, with Ed Miliband visiting the former "safe seat" to find out himself how bad the gap between Labour and the voters of Bradford West had become.
Now we have a more detailed analysis of the reasons behind Labour's spectacular fall thanks to a report from the campaign group Democratic Audit, which calls the result "one of the most surprising and notable byelection outcomes in recent British history".
The report's author, Lewis Baston offers a two-sided explanation. On one hand was George Galloway's leadership of a a locally driven Respect party machine that managed to channel the disillusionment of much of the constituency's Asian community. The party also harnessed the power of social media and made the best use of Galloway's skilled oratory.
On the other hand, the lessons to be drawn for Labour in particular are stark and raise the prospect of further Bradford West's occurring elsewhere. Both Labour and the Conservatives, the report notes, are implicit in the political history of the seat being "marred by patronage, neglect, bad organisation and even electoral fraud."
Baston says the main opposition parties were over-reliant on the system of clan-based voting known as "Biraderi", seeing the pursuit of the support of the heads of many Asian families as an alternative to genuine engagement with individuals themselves.
George Galloway has said his 'unprecedented' victory in the Bradford West byelection represents a rejection of mainstream politics. Link to video: George Galloway: Labour must learn from Bradford West defeat
Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, headed Labour's internal investigation into what went wrong in Bradford West. He noted that Ed Miliband had now visited the constituency "several times" and that the party was implementing the recommendations of its own report. He went on:
We produced a report with recommendations which are being implemented, including a Future Candidate's Programme for Bradford, which is designed to find a new generation of potential Labour candidates who are leaders in their community. The selection process is changing, there are women and young people's forums being established, and Labour is determined to be a strong voice for people of Bradford on the issues that matter to them.
However worthy the initiative may sound, Khan's words do not suggest the party has learned the kinds of lessons that it needs to if it is to re-take the seat in 2015. Are a few visits from Ed Miliband really likely to have made a significant difference? Concentrating so heavily as Khan does on candidates also raises the implausible suggestion that it was the party's choice of candidate, Imran Hussain, that was to blame.
Democratic Audit's reports does not point to a structural problem that requires re-jigging the way candidates in Bradford are chosen. Rather it points to a massive failure of mindset that saw Labour taking its votes for granted and failing to energise its support base with an exciting offer for the constituency.
And to emphasise the party's failure to learn these lessons, we now know that the seat is not even among Labour's 106 target seats for the next general election, suggesting either a belief they don't have a chance against Galloway if he re-stands, or – more worryingly – that the same mindset that lost them the seat in the first place is still there. What can send a worse signal to the public than publishing a list of priority seats that does not include the one that has caused them so many problems over the past year?
Writing for the Northerner on the day after the by-election, Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, spoke of the party taking its eye of the ball, believing that following the omnishambles budget the party felt it could take its "feet off the pedals and freewheel to victory", underestimating the threat posed by Respect.
"Voters," Danczuk concluded, "want to see a real appetite for office, a hunger for change." Such hunger comes not from structural change but a change in attitudes. The jury is still out as to whether Labour has realised the depth of the mindset change it needs to go through.